Techiest 2012 commencement speakers

The Woz, Steve Jobs’ biographer, IBM chair among those to share words of wisdom with new grads

Demand for technology industry executives, innovators and others in the field as college commencement speakers seems to be off a bit this spring vs. recent years, but plenty of institutions known for their tech focus and not do have techie speakers this time around. Here’s a rundown of some of the bigger names (and here’s a look back at last year’s roster, which included Cisco CEO John Chambers, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and Microsoft chief Steve Ballmer).

Schmidt headed up Google for from 2001 to 2011, before shifting to executive chairman. Previously, he ran Novell, and held numerous high-level positions at Sun. Schmidt is a UC Berkeley alum and software engineer who earned a master's in 1979 and Ph.D. in 1982.

This marks a return home for Palmisano, who earned his bachelor’s degree from the Baltimore school in 1973 and went to work with IBM shortly after that, rising through the ranks to eventually lead Big Blue.

Wozniak, who last year during a commencement address at Michigan State University told grads that almost none of the PC industry's founders had college degrees and said he was the only one who actually went back and earned his. He cited the influence on his life of his father, an electrical engineer, who pointed out the many choices available in life, including unconventional ones. With Woz, you never know what he might have in store for Santa Clara grads.

The co-founder and former CEO of the popular business-focused social network is now a venture capitalist at Greylock Partners, where he is helping startups get off the ground. He has degrees from Stanford University and Oxford University.

Sorkin made sure everyone heard about this little social network called Facebook via his Oscar-winning screenplay for “The Social Network” (he also won multiple Emmys for his work on “The West Wing”). He received at BFA in musical theatre from Syracuse in 1983.

Isaacson’s book, including deathbed confessions and all, has spawned a zillion stories since its publishing shortly after Steve Jobs’ death in October. A movie is said to be in the works from Sony based on the book. Isaacson has also written biographies about Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein and Henry Kissinger.

The CEO of the Apache Hadoop-focused enterprise cloud computing company earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in computer science from UC Berkeley and led Sleepycat Software, which created the Berkeley DB open source embedded database engine.

Last spring, Duke University snagged Cisco CEO John Chambers as its commencement speaker. This year, Old Dominion has Wendy Bahr, the senior vice president of Global and Strategic Partners for the Worldwide Partner Organization for Cisco. She’s an Old Dominion grad, with a bachelor’s degree in communications.

The Claremont, Calif., college graduates this spring will hear from not just an Emmy Award-winning TV personality in Nye (he is currently hosting three television series: “The 100 Greatest Discoveries,” “The Eyes of Nye,” and “Stuff Happens”). They’ll also hear from a children’s book author, VP of The Planetary Society and a guy who remains a licensed mechanical engineer in the state of Washington and has two patents on educational products: a magnifier made of water and an abacus that does arithmetic like a computer.

In 2005, Jackley co-founded the micro-lending site Kiva, which allows Internet users to lend as little as $25 to individual entrepreneurs, providing affordable capital to help them start or expand a small business. Kiva has facilitated nearly $300 million in loans among individuals in more than 200 countries.

Bastian burst onto the computing scene by forming WordPerfect with Alan Ashton in 1978, and served as chairman until the company merged with Novell in 1994. Since, he has made a name for himself as a social activist focused on human equality. The computer programmer earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Brigham Young University.

Becker is home of MassDiGI (Massachusetts Digital Games Institute) and a top-ranked undergraduate video game design program, making Sagolla a good fit. His "experiences at the birth of Twitter, and on the forefront of the app explosion, are relevant to our new graduates," says Becker President Robert Johnson.